Since the eighteenth century, the area that today belongs to the National Park of the Belluno Dolomites was a destination for visits and studies by some of the most important botanists of the time. Even today, the area preserves an extraordinary natural heritage, with a flora rich in rarities. The famous Codex Bellunensis, a precious figured herbarium from the early fifteenth century that describes the plants collected by scholars in the mountains that are now part of the park, is kept in the British Library in London.
A heritage of colors and scents that is renewed every year on the mountains overlooking Belluno and each year offer wonderful spectacles among the woods, the peaks and the waters of this corner of Veneto. From the red lily to the golden lily, from the mountain lily to the alpine poppy, from the red nigritella to the alpine buttercup, from the edelweiss to the squat, from the Moretti bellflower to the alpine cochlearia, from the silvery geranium to the iris of Monte Cengio, the flora of the park is a succession of botanical wonders.
I define myself as an ecologist rather than a botanist. I have always loved the natural sciences as a whole. But plants, with their surprising and exciting evolutionary dynamics, have always taught me something. Every day I learn from them. They are dynamic, they adapt to the environment with incredible strategies and, above all, contrary to what happens in human society, they implement a form of collaborative competition, aimed at the best use of available resources. All have a role, from the smallest species to the largest tree, and contribute to a better reality.
I find myself wondering if really the society that man has built and is building, the technology he has developed, the answers of science, the law that protects us ... I wonder if really the wild life in the jungle is more cruel . Perhaps it is inherent in some men, that thought that creeps in and constantly suggests the echo of the so-called "golden age", but reading the newspapers, listening to the news, trying to understand why politics is so complicated since be made "on a human scale" - and certainly the average man (but I doubt that even politicians talk like that, in the absence of their lawyers ...) says so - it's hard to believe that an existence should in which it is clear in mind who to escape and who to trust (run away from the lion, caress the rabbit) is so terribly aberrant, compared to a society where you have everything you want, but a huge restlessness and the rotten blood.
Yes of course, if I woke up tomorrow in the midst of brambles and brushwood and had to run away from the hungry lion, I would be dead in less than half a minute, and surely having to pick berries to feed myself I would regret any supermarket.
But, here, I am not trying to say that man is demonic in nature or that progress is negative. I am only expressing my personal personal in realizing that this jungle we are in now is terrifying: an incomprehensible politics in which we, poor game, cannot understand the mechanisms or even glimpse them, a society that makes us stressed even on vacation , a collective anxiety, information that becomes a collective forum of opinions, subjectivity that becomes law, if you have enough power to buy a few journalists and have the right connections. Values ​​become the object of ridicule and bullying, of the psychological one, of the slightly bad one. The believer becomes a bigot, "health-conscious" is almost a negative term, women are whores or puritans, drugs are a common good, the mafia is our neighbor, we eat antibiotics directly in the meat of the supermarket.
I'm allowed to doubt progress, but I'm not shocking enough to consider only one side of the coin.
What scares me is the human mind, the culture. it has always managed to survive: the inquisition, the censorship, the world wars. Even in Nazi prisons and concentration camps, the culture survived.
Will it survive the internet? Will he survive a world so hectic, so fast, so cruel, so ambiguous? to a jungle with rules expressed in decrees? If wikipedia tomorrow said that Napoleon never existed, that man is actually a bird, that gravity allows us to change color.
culture can really survive all of this, as the holders of classical music go to war with each other and are beaten by any pianist, writers scramble their strenuous writings to the most, beaten by teenage novels that will appear as best seller next to anna karenina and the leopard, painters and sculptors are ignored because the guy who ties a dog in a museum or who places himself as a sculpture is more "audience" and art critics talk about it more.
I am concerned about the voice of humanity: is it strong enough to withstand even this silent war? Or is this not a war, and this oppression, this anguish, this evil of living will remain a worldwide constant, and only a few will come out of it, like crazy astronauts?
The problem of plastic is bigger and more important than we think and reducing plastic waste is essential. Plastic is not easy to recycle (it can only turn into a quality of plastic more ways than it once cannot be). Just think that only 6.6% of the plastic bottles now circulating on the world market are made from recycled plastic (Greenpeace data).
Giving up chewing gum is really a small thing that will work wonders! Although it is a habit brought by the Americans after the Second World War also in Europe, and now spread all over the world, the ‘butt’ is not good for you and contains plastic both inside and in the packaging.Do we eat out for lunch? We get into the habit of carrying our container and asking the fast food restaurant or restaurant where we go to put the food there. Maybe even what is left over we can take home in the same container!It’s true, they are comfortable: you go home in the evening and dinner is ready in 5 minutes. But beware: frozen foods are the ‘kings’ of plastic. By buying them, you actively contribute to polluting. By trying to remove frozen foods from your diet, you will return to a healthier cuisine with natural and seasonal ingredients, of which you know the origin, and you prefer organic food. Even if you take a quarter of an hour longer, you and the Earth will gain from this choice!To produce the disposable diapers consumed every year by American children, it takes 80,000 kg of plastic and the cutting down of more than 200,000 trees. This means that by simply switching to cloth diapers, you can not only educate your child to respect the environment from an early age but you can also save money and contribute to the health of the world.
THE PRODIGY OF IDEAS 